‘Find Kristin Smart’ Facebook group is keeping missing student’s memory alive. Here’s how
For the past six years, a Facebook page dedicated to missing Cal Poly student Kristin Smart and her family has been a forum for keeping her story and her memory alive.
During an eventful year that brought several new developments in the Smart case and renewed publicity, the Find Kristin Smart page became a force to reckon with — ballooning to more than 31,000 members from around the world.
At the start of 2020, the group had around 8,000 members, reflecting the rise in interest generated from news coverage and a popular podcast about the case, “Your Own Backyard,” said Sandee Hunt-Burns, one of the Find Kristin Smart group’s coordinators.
Smart was 19 when she went missing on May 25, 1996, after attending an off-campus party in San Luis Obispo. The Cal Poly freshman was last seen with another student, Paul Flores, who walked her back toward her residence hall.
What happened to Smart then remains a mystery — inspiring theories about what actually happened to the 6-foot-1 blonde young woman whose effervescent smile is memorialized in photos and family videos.
On the Find Kristin Smart Facebook group, members share posts, pose questions about the Smart case and discuss key details about the timeline of her disappearance.
“Some people on Find Kristin Smart have been familiar and even involved with the case for 24 years,” Hunt-Burns said. “Some joined 24 minutes ago and they’re just learning about it.”
Much of the discussion in the Facebook group revolves around the smallest and largest of new developments in the case, timeline of events in the hours and days before and after her disappearance, and memories of Kristin.
Flores has continued to be a person of interest throughout the 24-year investigation into Smart’s disappearance but has never been charged for a crime related to the case. He was also the subject of several recent search warrants.
The San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office have served a total of 39 search warrants related to the case, agency spokesman Tony Cipolla said Thursday.
Those include warrants served at Flores’s Los Angeles area home as well as the Arroyo Grande home of his mother in February and a Flores relative in Washington state; each of the warrants was served in early February 2020.
Moderators for the Find Kristin Smart group closely monitors posts for false information or personal attacks on the Flores family, especially ones that imply violence against him or his family, Hunt-Burns said.
How Find Kristin Smart group started
The Facebook group Find Kristin Smart was started in 2014 by Smart advocate Dennis Mahon. It’s now moderated by the Smart social media team, garnering thousands of posts and comments.
Kristin Smart’s mother, Denise Smart, serves as the group’s administrator. Other moderators besides Hunt-Burns include Mahon, Bradley Spence, Madeline Mastriano, and Carla Clawson Hoffman.
The goal of the Facebook group is to help keep Smart’s memory alive, support her family and provide “up to date and factual information on Kristin’s case, as well as encourage respectful conversation and community bonding.”
“The group has a purpose and that’s to control the narrative,” Hunt-Burns told The Tribune. “So many news articles are about Paul Flores. This group has shared her story, her face, her life, her personality. It’s a spot that’s just for her, and really important to her family. For the Smarts, sometimes (their daughter’s disappearance) can be overwhelming. It’s very stressful at times. This page has 31,000 people from all over the world who care about (their) child.”
2020 brings developments in case of missing Cal Poly student
The podcast ““Your Own Backyard,” which was launched by Lambert in September 2019, has brought new attention to that mission.
Two new episodes of “Your Own Backyard” were released in January and November. The January segment focused on the Sheriff’s Office’s work on the case. The November program honed in on a 16-hour window after Smart was last seen, examining the whereabouts of Paul Flores.
The latest episode, released Nov. 25, is based on information from a Smart family notebook that included tips and leads collected by Smart’s father, Stan Smart, about his daughter’s disappearance.
Hunt-Burns called Lambert “a national treasure.”
“I 1000% vouch for the fact that his interest is in finding Kristin Smart and helping the Smart family,” she said. “He has had Netflix and others are beating down his door. Chris could have signed a bunch of dotted lines (for media productions) and rode off into the sunset. But that’s not important to him and there’s no shortage of gratitude for the Smarts.”
Other developments that emerged in 2020 included a new billboard calling attention to the Smart case outside the office of James Murphy, a Smart family attorney in the case, and a separate billboard posted by Oceano resident Scott Millar at the corner of Highway 1 and Halcyon Road.
In January, a group of Smart’s supporters started a petition calling for Cal Poly to change Smart’s transcripts, which reflected failing grades. In response, the university in February announced that Smart’s final transcripts had been changed to “W’s” to reflect “withdrawn.”
In August, the Find Kristin Smart group floated the idea of buying a home next to the home of Paul Flores’s mother, Susan Flores, possibly for use as a Kristin Smart museum. But the house was purchased relatively quickly by a private buyer.
CBS’s “48 Hours” showcased the Smart case in a Nov. 28 episode presented by correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti. “The Disappearance of Kristin Smart” lays out key details of the case, including a review of important evidence and witness statements in interviews with Lambert.
Facebook group provides support for missing SLO woman’s family
What’s the next anticipated development in the Smart case? A Find Kristin Smart moderator said she believes an arrest is around the corner.
Stockton resident Carla Hoffman, a family friend of the Smarts, said the Smarts have received positive news about the course of the Sheriff’s Office’s investigation into Smart’s disappearance.
“It’s hard to say when that will be, and we truly don’t know what evidence they have, but the family has been told that directly by the Sheriff’s Office that an arrest is coming,” Hoffman said. “Based on my awareness of the investigation, and compelling evidence, they’re going to have an arrest. I believe that will happen.”
Hoffman said that Smart’s parents, who live in Stockton, have grieved in different ways, adding that the pain and loss never goes away.
Kristin Smart’s mother, Denise Smart, has thrown herself into the efforts to resolve the case and “get answers,” meeting privately with San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson twice in recent months, Hoffman said. Parkinson and Sheriff’s cold case investigator Clint Cole have been helpful and responsive to the family, she said, though tight-lipped about specific findings during the investigation. Stan Smart, the father, has put his energy into his work. Denise and Stan Smart both worked as teachers.
Both parents now are in their 70s and extremely private, Hoffman said, choosing to avoid media statements for the time being.
“They weren’t opposed to talking to the media in the beginning (early days of investigation), or even for the first 10 years,” Hoffman said. “But they’ve stopped because they don’t feel like it’s helping.”
Hoffman said she met Denise Smart through her work at the San Joaquin County Office of Education years ago, and they’ve grown close over the years as friends. Hoffman said that not knowing where their daughter is and what happened to her has been devastating for the Smarts.
“That can be said of any parent that loses a child,” said Hoffman, who has a background in psychology. “It’s called ambiguous loss. That falls into the arena of when a loved one disappears and nobody knows what happened, such as wartime missing in action cases. There’s no place to physically lay a child to rest. It’s a heavy emotional hit and can’t be defined.”
Hoffman said the Facebook group provides the Smarts with a place they can regularly check in for support and encouragement — and know that their daughter’s memory won’t be forgotten.
“The family is so thankful for this loving community,” Hoffman said. “They don’t have to carry this alone. There’s so much around them that buoys them up. They have so much to be grateful for.”
This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘Find Kristin Smart’ Facebook group is keeping missing student’s memory alive. Here’s how."
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